moderator
With a finger in the wound: Jan Böhmermann turns 41
More controversial than almost anyone else in the German media landscape: Jan Böhmermann turns 41. Photo: Christophe Gateau/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
Every week he makes Twitter glow with his “ZDF Magazin Royale”. “Fest & Fluffy” is part of the Sunday program in many households. In 2016, Jan Böhmermann caused a state affair with a poem.
He is an entertainer, satirist, author, podcaster and much more. In addition, he is more controversial than almost anyone else in Germany. Practically nothing is known about his private life, which makes him hardly vulnerable.
His vocation is to put his finger deep into the wound and to criticize the everyday German media landscape. Jan Böhmermann turns 41 today.
Böhmermann was born in Bremen in 1981 as the son of a policeman and grew up in the outskirts of the city. He started his journalistic career in 1997 with the Bremen daily newspaper “Die Norddeutsche”. Two years later he was hired as a moderator at “Radio Bremen”. He experimented, adapted his style and used the platform to develop his comedic talent. Engagements at WDR, hr3, RTL and 1 Live followed. In 2009 he became a member of the ensemble of entertainer Harald Schmidt, who is still one of Böhmermann’s idols today.
Controversial work on ZDF
With the “Neo Magazin Royale”, which was broadcast on ZDFneo from 2013, his popularity increased. His show was enriched by numerous guests and the concept of the show was to cause a stir with controversial actions.
For example, through Böhmermann’s criticism of the pop music industry. He accused the German mainstream artists of distributing interchangeable music with arbitrary texts that were full of product placement and just mass-produced. With the help of monkeys from the Gelsenkirchen Zoo, who were supposed to randomly choose sentences from advertising slogans and tweets from YouTube stars, he created the song “Menschen Leben Tanzen Welt”, which went straight to the top of the iTunes and Amazon charts.
From November 2020, the show made it onto the ZDF main program. Since then, the “ZDF Magazin Royale” has had an investigative-journalistic focus.
The Böhmermann Affair
In the spring of 2016, according to many, Böhmermann also went too far. In his program he presents a satirical diatribe against the Turkish President Erdogan. The situation developed into a state affair. Böhmermann distanced himself from the content and merely emphasized that he wanted to test the limits of satire. The consequence of the affair was the abolition of paragraph 103 of the Criminal Code – insult to organs and representatives of foreign states.
Podcast giant and fundraiser
In 2011, Böhmermann began the show “Two old hands tell about the past” with the entertainer Klaas Heufer-Umlauf, with which they toured Germany. In 2012, the program “Sanft & Carefully” started on Radio Eins with musician Olli Schulz. Since 2016, the show has been broadcast exclusively on the Spotify audio streaming service in the form of the “Fest & Flauschig” podcast and has achieved huge ratings throughout Europe. Together with other celebrities, he regularly calls for donations. He has already collected over 200,000 euros for sea rescue.